Lesson Plan: Photons Science
This lesson plan includes the objectives, prerequisites, and exclusions of the lesson teaching students how to describe the division of the energy in electromagnetic waves into packets of energy, depending on these packet’s frequencies.
Objectives
Students will be able to
- recall that light consists of quanta of energy called photons,
- recognize that the energy of a photon is directly proportional to its frequency,
- recall that the constant of proportionality between photon frequency and energy is called Planck’s constant.
Prerequisites
Students should already be familiar with
- the meaning of the term frequency,
- the fact that different visible light colors are associated with different electromagnetic wave frequencies,
- the idea that light is a category of energy associated with the transfer of energy between objects,
- the fact that an electromagnetic wave is an oscillation in both electric and magnetic fields.
Exclusions
Students will not cover
- the phases of photons,
- the photon momentum,
- the masslessness of photons,
- the photon interactions with atoms,
- the wave-particle duality of photons,
- the numerical value of Planck’s constant.